To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

Jesus lived a life that was full of joy and contradictions and fights, you know? If they were to paint a picture of Jesus without contradictions, the gospels would be fake, but the contradictions are a sign of authenticity.

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

I don’t concern myself with award. I’d been to the party enough times to know it really didn’t matter.

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

Over the years I’ve seen people lose a spouse and then withdraw and lose interest in life, and I believe we need to resist that.

Life’s short. Anything could happen, and it usually does, so there is no point in sitting around thinking about all the ifs, ands and buts.

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

Thinking fragments reality – it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

Our lifelong certainties about the world can be demolished in a single second.

Plato is my friend; Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.

Measure your wealth by what you’d have left if you lost all your money.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

I don’t think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the author has not in the least thought about it in terms of film, which can be turned into good films.

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

I really don’t pay attention to the outside world when I’m incarcerated, because being in prison is like being in a different world. So I don’t pay attention to what’s going on outside of jail, because it’s all beyond my control.

Life is warfare.

Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.

Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.

To not follow your passion in life is a recipe for failure and unhappiness.

You can’t imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

To make headway, improve your head.

Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.

There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion.

The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man… It is more powerful than external circumstances.

I’m like a recovering perfectionist. For me it’s one day at a time.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.

New discoveries in science will continue to create a thousand new frontiers for those who still would adventure.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

One of the best ways to see tree flowers is to climb one of the tallest trees and to get into close, tingling touch with them, and then look broad.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

In terms of doing work and in terms of learning and evolving as a person, you just grow more when you get more people’s perspectives… I really try and live the mission of the company and… keep everything else in my life extremely simple.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.